Mass Effect 3 Impressions - The Good and Bad

Well, Mass Effect 3 is finally here and I'm not far into it at all (just had my first walkthrough of the new Normandy) and so far it's pretty good. I was worried after playing the demo since the opening is so...abrupt, but so far I'm enjoying it. But I figured I would go over a few points, some things it's done better, some it's done worse. In no particular order and with some minor spoilers from the first 2-4 hours or so.

The Good

1. The music - the new score is a lot nicer and a lot better at setting a tone than ME1 or 2, it's better in some places than others but overall I've been actually wanting to seek out some of the tunes - something I never did for ME1 or 2.

2. Shepherd's Male Voice Actor - No he's no Daniel Day Lewis but it seems that old bland male shepherd is trying a little bit harder to throw some emotion into his voice this time around. Which leads me too...

3. Better Facial Emoting - The facial expressions of the characters seem to work a little better this time around and aren't as awkward in the case of Shepherd.

4. Handling Romance Better - While I was shocked Liara asked me point blank about our relationship for the rest of the game...I"m glad she did. I'm glad that a friendship option has opened up with crew members of the opposite sex so I don't need to worry about treading on people's toes. Got annoying in ME2 when I would just be nice and it would turn into sexy sexy talk. Plus, forced me to actually make a decision early on which is nice.

5. Liara's Character - They seem to have found a balance between the "I'm such a badass" Liara of ME2 and the quieter reserved Liara of Mass Effect nicely so far.

6. Weapon Mods and Number Crunching Are Back - This is a huge one (for me anyway), I really missed the lack of any sort of real role playing number crunchy anything in ME2 but liked the improved combat so seeing a RPG lite in the third is great for me. Weapon weight affecting power cool down times is a really nice way of balancing out fire power with power usage, the fact that every upgrade has a branching path now. Cool stuff all around. Along with choices to make in upgrades and whatsit. Yes.

7. Dialogue Between Party Members - I walked in on Liara and Joker having a conversation and it was great. One of my huge complaints with the old games is that outside of a few mission specific quips it felt like the crew wasn't united or friendly with each other. Hearing party members communicate with one another informally is a nice way of tricking me into thinking everyone's in it together. I'm a sucker for small fixes (as you can probably tell by now).

8. Stuff Happens During Dialogue - I like that characters will move and do stuff during certain dialogue scenes instead of just...standin' there. That said, we all know Shepherd must come to a complete stop to contemplate his life a few times before saying anything. I always thought it would be funny if they wrote that aspect of him into his character, that he didn't talk much but when he did, it was powerful shit.

9. The Roll - I enjoy the action roll...but sometimes it screws up which way I'm facing and I get confused.

The Bad

1. The New Council - What a cop out! I destroyed the old council and it's supposed to be populated with humans and it wasn't! Or was it? Maybe I just misheard but it seems they picked an option where regardless of what choice you made it would be the same characters.

2. The graphics - YES, the graphics are better, it looks nicer but I can tell it was built up from the existing engine because it still has the same light and texture pop in problems that ME2 had. Boo. And shadows still look kind of...wrong. But this is both a good and a bad I think.

3. My Shepherd Model - My shepherd model was a damn handsome man in ME2...importing him...hit and miss. Sometimes he looks great others not. I suppose that was true between ME1 and 2.

4. Buttons! - This is PC specific but once again they only map out the controls that one would have in a console version, but a lot of buttons are going unused. Not to mention there are some things I can't double click on, I have to hit "confirm" on the bottom. Just bad design for a PC release really.

5. Not as much choice in the dialogue (so far) - I feel like so far my shepherd isn't asking me for as much input in his responses. Could just be that it's early days yet.

6. The Reliance on Arrival's story - if knowing the set up in Arrival sets the stage for ME3...which it does, make it free to play! I didn't pay for the DLC and then I was confused by Mass Effect 3's very...abrupt beginning. I still think even with Arrival's context it doesn't do enough to set the stage enough in the beginning. Even just a little introductory dialogue of "Shepherd is grounded after an incident in blahblahblah" or something. As it is he's just randomly stripped of status which no real context if the last thing you saw was your crew being happy that all or some of them lived and then...boom, shepherd is grounded. No prologue or segway is just lazy Bioware. LAZY. Not to mention, after my last blog about making bad choices meaningful if your shepherd dies at the end of ME2 you can't import your save at all.

7. The Opening In General - I was hoping the bit shown in the demo was not indicitive of the pacing of the actual opening. Alas, it was, and it's rushed. I feel like Bioware didn't want to spend the time setting up how Shepherd got back to Earth or any character building or "what happened to so and so" moments at all. It was sloppy, and yeah, a lot like Mass Effect 2's explody opening but at least ME2 it was business as usual for the crew so it implied some sort of continuation from the first game. This one there's a huge gap of information between the opening moments and the end of the second game. Not to mention that we haven't really seen much of the reapers before and now there's all these different types and whatnot. It's very confusing.

8. The Attempts at Being Super Serial - Right, this is another good and bad one. While some of the attempts to make Shepherd a little more vulnerable/emotional are fine...some don't quite work. The little speech to Kaiden in the hospital with the obligatory "That's an order" at the end just felt like it came out of a daytime soap, not a Bioware game. I'm hoping the classier of these moments (the kid getting fried in the shuttle in the opening for one) outweigh the cheesy ones in the end.

9. The Mexican Being All...Mexican - Having a character who speaks very normally but throws in a "puta" or "Pendejo" every once in a while just comes across as a little forced to me. I could be in the minority here though.

10. No Context For Changing Your Appearance - Yet another problem with the very opening of the game. I didn't change my Shepherd so...hey, but if you did there's no explanation for it. Maybe this isn't important to anyone else but I liked in Mass Effect 2 that it was written into the very story.

11. HOW MUCH GOD DAMN EXPERIENCE DO I HAVE?! - I'm not sure if it was because my character had survived the previous 2 games but I feel mostly upgraded from the word go. I know I shouldn't be complaining about more power but a slower upgrade progression would have been nice.

Overall, as you can tell from my complaints, the game gets better and better as it goes but the opening is definitely a let down. But the improvements are outweighing the complaints so far.